Social shopping a new dimension in social networking	Visited: 1097 5.0/5.0 (1 votes total) Rate: Select 1 - Terrible 2 - Poor 3 - Average 4 - Good 5 - Outstanding
by Fabian Smith January 13, 2011

The social networking waters are gradually making their way to every part of the marketing hub, invading almost every part of our lives. Social shopping is another phenomenon that is taking over the marketing world. Social shopping platform is a true market place, where users can meet up with other people, engage into conversation and may also get down to trading any item they want to dispose off.

Moreover, they can discuss over the internet while shopping for a product, share their experiences. One more thing that can be done is a live environment where sales personnel can directly engage a customer in a chat and then shape his opinion.

We have been hearing of different brands integrating with Facebook in order to take their social marketing to another level, gain more followers and word of mouth. Online shopping stores such as Levis, Amazon, Pandora and many others are linking with Facebook to boost the social shopping experience, and with that marketers are now closer to the hearts and minds of the buyers like never before.

However, social shopping concept is not fully adopted yet by majority of retailers but the coming year of 2011 is promising, with Facebook rolling out new services like Open Graph to integrate with almost every kind of social media that is available on the internet; the shopping world is in for a treat. Facebook is using all the user data it has, very smartly. Facebook connect is already a part of many famous online stores, where the users’ interests are taken in accordance. More than anything, it brings convenience and time saving for the customers. Where friends had to set a time to go out and shop for something, they can now just log in from where ever they are and shop together.

Just as Pandora uses Facebook integration to give its users a more personalized music experience via their social graph, similarly, Levis opted for Facebook Open Graph and demonstrated that user social graph and ‘Like’ button is indeed highly applicable to e-commerce and social shopping.

Integration with Facebook caters to clients’ needs

Facebook Open Graph helps in understanding the mind-set of buyers; they integrate your website, while Facebook log-in registration makes it easier for the user, providing a simplified experience. When you connect with Facebook and add personalized features, it gives a significant impression on users when they see what their friends ‘like’ and review. Also, you can enhance reviews on your site with social content giving users a chance to comment on the posts, this further gives them an opportunity to post feedbacks on their walls. Maintaining your website homepage and personalizing it by surfacing the most recent feedbacks from users, gives an authenticated touch to it.

‘TheFind’ too being one of the second largest shopping search engines, also integrated with Facebook to provide a complete personalized search to its users.  My personal favorite is Amazon connecting with Facebook and leveraging with it immensely. Buyers can now see the list of gifts keeping in mind their preferences and interests. They even show the birthday notification along with a gift suggestion. With your Facebook friends’ profile that lists their favorite books, movies and TV shows, it is a very cool feature that excites the users.